Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders Encore barrel advice?

I have a Prohunter frame. I'll be hunting in Kansas this year with a muzzleloader tag and need to buy a barrel. I know there's other options than the factory TC barrels. Specifically, I've read about the bergera and green mountain barrels. I figured I'd defer to the expert advice of the 24hr forum...which barrel would you buy for your encore?

Give these guys a look see

http://www.maxmuzzleloader.com/

Bergera, I have 2, a .50 & a .45 cal. Both shoot extremely well with BlackHorn 209. They outshoot my Encore barrel, wich in itself is a pretty good shooter! Plus they are less expensive.

JohnP

A "turn and pull" breech plug is more important in convenience than the 3 barrel makers you mentioned.

Doc

I would buy the TC endeavor barrel assembly

Could you elaborate? To be honest, I haven't kept recent with mzlders. My most current one is a Knight wolverine circa ~ 1995.

The newer breech plugs used by CVA and T/C that can be removed without any tools such as T/C speed breech XT on the T/C Endeavor and Triumpth ML rifles should be a primary consideration in choosing a barrel.

Doc

If ya have time I'd get a .45 pacnor tube from SMI,,,,, reallyyyyyy nice

Okay...another question. .45cal of .50 cal and why?

.50, hands down. There's much more variety in bullets available in .50 than any other size. Plus, if you want to hunt anything larger than deer, some states like CO mandate .50 or larger. And with sabots, you can always go smaller than .50 diameter with a .50 bore.

.45 cal pacnor from SMI will shoot a .40 cal 195 grain Barnes at 2600 fps really easy with smokeless and much faster if ya want,,,, kill about anything you want to hunt unless there is a cal restriction,,, I have a 45/70 pro hunter barrel converted by SMI on my Encore and it shoots very very well at that speed easy using moderate smokeless loads,, If you go smokeless you can't get smaller than a .452 bullet in a .50 cal barrel,,, but they will shot well also,,, black powder isn't as finicky about components used as smokeless

Gotcha. Not saying it wouldn't be convenient, but it's actually not that important, to me at least. I will never use it in my home state, only for the infrequent out of state hunts that require a muzzleloader. My primary consideration is accuracy. I don't mind using a tool to remove the plug once every 2-3 years.

You will find more 50 cal. things to shoot then 45 I have them all 45,50,54,58,the old cap guns can find things but inlines go 50 with the C.V.A. Bargara thus is best I belive